I got the opportunity to review this book honestly, and so that is what I will do.
I have to say, I was excited to read this. The synopsis sounded amazing and wild, but when it came to the actual story, I didn't enjoy it as much as I would have expected.

This book was not at all bad, but neither was it my favorite.
The character seemed childish considering what happened to her and all that she faced.
The writing style was not my type. The plot line was too slow and it was played out in a complicated format that I am not in favor of.
The plot was good though, but it had room for improvement.

This was a wuick and an easy YA book to read. I found the storyline intriguing but unfortunately it wasnt developed quite enough for me and it was the same with the characters some were more tolerable than others, although I found the main character really challenging to read about.
There is self harm content in this book that isnt really warned about and it was enough to make my toes curl, im in agony when I get sanitising gel in a papercut let alone swticking a paperclip into my cuticles and then using cleaning products, I mean gees.
There were parts I liked and parts i really disliked but overall it was an ok read.

This book had a lot of promise, I was intrigued by the plot line and I honestly thought I would enjoy it, but unfortunately it just isn't for me.

I found the main character to be a bit of a Brat, and she just refused to change, she just blamed others all the time, and I understand its because she's a teenager, but I just found her to be very unlikable, and I had to DNF THIS ONE.

idk maybe I could give it another shot in the future, but yea I was getting frustrated and that made me not enjoy the book anymore.

Tesseract (Tessa) Hilliard is a sixteen-year-old girl named after the idea of possibilities. Possibilities she feels as though she’s squandered after her parent's divorce and she’s stuck moving from Portland, Oregon to the small town of Elmsville after her parent's divorce. She and her mom are barely making ends meet while her dad is living it large as a Food Network star. Tessa’s mom hadn’t even tried to fight for more in the divorce, had just packed up her daughter and left for a rundown apartment that the two could barely afford where Tessa focused on school and friends while mom slung drinks at the local bar.

That is… until Tessa made one mistake that quite literally would burn the world down around her.

The Apology Box follows Tessa Hilliard as she tries to make amends with a world that’s turned against her, leaving her wondering if there’s any place left for her. Through an unexpected ally at her community service assignment, Tessa begins to find a road to healing. But is it too late for her?

I wanted to like this book. I REALLY wanted to like this book. The premise seemed like it was going to knock it out of the park. But, honestly? This whole book fell flat for me. There is potential, though. The story is there and the secondary characters are more likable than the primary, but that’s something a little rewriting could fix.

You can tell that the outline is there, the framework for a great story is in place. But it just hasn’t found its footing.

Tessa is an extremely unlikeable protagonist and I found myself rooting against her around every turn. Her best moments were spent at community service or interacting with characters that only appeared for a few pages out of the entire book. There was no connection between her and the characters that surrounded her day in and day out. There was nothing that made you want them to succeed. Most characters felt as though they were written only to give Tessa some sort of conflict.

It worked… but that doesn’t mean we cheered for anyone involved.

Tessa comes across as a spoiled brat. There’s a lot of emphasis placed on the fact that she’s a pretty girl, an excellent student, a supposed goody two shoes. Her physical appearance is hounded on so that the reader knows this is a pretty, popular girl who spirals into a dark place. A dark place that is indicated by dying her hair black. See the stereotype there?

There are moments of fat-shaming, moments where self-harm seems to be glorified, and suicide is a frequent thought among several characters. These thoughts aren’t addressed, not really. We’re told that Tessa just one day stops self-harming, that she wants to live. It’s an afterthought as things wrap up but there’s no discussion of her actually trying to get better outside of a mention of enjoying her therapy sessions.

I do have to give Ulsted some credit, though. There is a disclaimer at the end of the book that encourages anyone reading to reach out for help if they have thoughts of suicide or are self-harming. It makes me feel a little better that the author is aware that the material is problematic at best… glorified at worst.

But, still, the book kept me reading. I wanted to finish it. I wanted to know what happened… even if I wasn’t attached to Tessa as a character, I was invested in a couple of side characters and I wanted to know how the story ended for them. Which tells you that there is a lot of potential in this book. Ulsted knows how to build characters and can tell a story… but I’m not sure she realizes where those strengths lie with this story.

I want to see more from Ulsted. I think she has a lot of potential as an author.

This book just isn’t the best work.

We all make mistakes. Sometimes it feels like we can't go on after those mistakes and you want to give up because it feels like no one can help you. That's how Tessa feels after she accidentally starts a huge forest fire which destroys nature, businesses, people's families, and her future. The penalties are steep for Tessa, including a huge fine, writing letters to those whom she impacted so negatively, and an endless amount of community service hours.

For her community service hours, Tessa begins volunteering at Morningstar, which is a home for the elderly. There she meets Effby, a crotchety old woman who really doesn't like anyone and has no family. Oddly, despite seemingly wanting to both be left alone and disappear, Effby and Tessa begin to bond. Perhaps a cranky old woman might just be the person who can help get Tessa through this unbearably difficult time. Who knows, maybe Tessa will learn a thing or two about forgiving herself even if no one else will.

This book was amazing. I loved every single page. I can't wait to book talk it with my students!

An easy, nice read.
Nothing special, nothing brilliant but I did enjoy it although there are some plots and characters I would have preferred to be written more into depth (especially Diego who could have been a likeable character but came out of nowhere and little background information was given about him). I did not like the main character at all. Sometimes she seems ashamed and sorry, most of the times she sounds like a brat, which I can understand since she is 16. Still did not like her very much. The letters she wrote were mediocre, she thought so too, and I had hoped she would do something about that when she realized.
Some formatting issues and spelling errors I caught but I know this is not the final draft so I cannot complain.
Please check the trigger warnings before reading the book (mentioned right at the end in the author's note).

Sadly, I did not enjoy this book. It needs multiple rounds of editing to clean up a lot of the spelling errors and continunity errors. I also don't like writing 1-star reviews. I hate writing the first review for a book more than I hate writing 1-star reviews.

ALSO HUGE CONTENT WARNING FOR A SELF-HARMING MAIN CHARACTER. (her specific type of self-harm will be at the end of the review - well advertised, if you'd prefer not to read about it.

I'm not going to be overly wordy but I'd like to point out two big errors that are based on the blurb provided.

1- Tessa is told she has to write apology letters "..write an apology letter to every person who had lost property or revenue and to each firefighter who helped put out the first. I had 228 letters to write."

If she has 228 letters to write, why does the blurb say 227?

Also, to follow up the main point of the letters ... we were told that nearly a thousand firefighters had been called in to help fight the fire. So, which firefighters are the ones getting letters? Since 228 is nowhere near 'nearly a thousand'.

2- From the blurb 'suffocated by shame and resentment' Tessa rarely shows this throughout the book. She acts like a brat over and over and then gets upset when people talk about 'the girl who set the fire' being a monster. Tessa doesn't get to feel shame for doing something horrible but then resent those who also think she's done something horrible.

From the blurb I was led to believe this was going to be a story about a girl learning to forgive herself for a terrible fire. She would stumble and be resentful and hateful, but she would learn that she needed to move on. She would have empathy for her actions and learn that her selfish nature was harmful. None of that happens. It's a shame. There was so much room for Tessa to grow and learn but instead she spends 90%+ of the book being selfish and apathetic to everyone and everything.

The book ended with me feeling frustration that Tessa never really seemed to grow as a person.

Maybe it was just me. Tessa did have moment of relatibility. Teens (and all humans) can be selfish and hypocritical, but Tessa tessa became too apathetic and too focused on her own life. She didn't ever take charge or try to fix anything that didn't directly affect her own life. She stayed selfish throughout the entire book and I found it difficult to care about her or even want her to succeeded (in anything).

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Tessa uses a paperclip to dig at her cuticles (mostly fingers, but at one point her toes as well) and then enjoys the burning feeling when using cleaning chemicals or when dragging her torn cuticles across various surfaces. There are multiple scenes in which Tessa is actively tearing apart her cutiles, references the condition of them or describes the pain from her harm.